Tag Archives: Otley Walking Festival

It doesn’t seem a whole year since we did a musical walk around Otley pubs for the annual Otley Walking Festival! But here we are – only 2 days away from this fantastic event!

Join us from 7:30pm on FRIDAY 1st JULY outside The Woolpack Studios, where we will sing and play for you and then guide you on to The Horse and Farrier and on to the final destination: the riverside gardens at The Fleece.

It is not a strenuous walk and will be a lot of fun! Expect lots of singing along and good times 🙂

I can’t believe it’s June all ready and there is so much to look forward to!

OTLEY UKULELE ORCHESTRA – every Monday 7pm – 9pm – ALL WELCOME 🙂

In the 7pm – 8pm sessions we’ll be continuing to have a good old strum and sing – songs are suitable for new players as well as those with more experience. Songs we are looking at the moment range from rock and roll to disco to 90s indie!

8pm – 9pm session – we’ll be working towards our gigs that are coming up – there are 5 opportunities to play together in June!
Sign up sheets will be available in the 8pm session from this evening.

If you’ve never been to the 8pm session you’d be more than welcome to come and have a listen in… you may find that you can join in with a lot of what is going on!

OTHER EVENTS
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are in Leeds Town Hall 12th June. There are still tickets available… anyone up for a drink in the interval?! I’ll see you there!
Haworth Ukulele Group Extravaganza is a whole weekend of Ukulele fun organised by our friends in Haworth – for the programme of events please click hereHUGE2015
Our very own Tony is starring in Burley Theatre Group’s production of Alice in Wonderland… we hear his Ukulele will also be making a star appearance! Good Luck Tony! If you’d like to go along click here for more detailshttp://www.burleytheatre.org.uk/u615/

DISABILITY ROCKS!
Big thank you to all who came to play this weekend at the wonderful Disability Rocks event. Wr had a great time… I hope we can do it again next year. It was lovely to have signing from our friends at Sunshine and Smiles too!

OUO and RUG on Stage at Disability Rocks Festival

GREAT NORTHERN UKULELE FESTIVAL 2015
I had a wonderful time at the GNUF festival – very inspiring. It was a really well organised and varied festival – here are a few little phone snaps! I’m looking forward to next year all ready!!

Great Northern Ukulele Festival 2015

I really hope to see you soon for more playing and singing together… thank you so much for your continued support of all things OUO!

Saturday was the Carnival… and WE WON FIRST PRIZE in the Adult Group Category!

I have to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who helped decorate the float, those of you who gave up your time and your homes and gardens to make, paint and create a little piece of Hawaii! I couldn’t have done it without you.

There are so many great pictures of everyone…

And on Sunday there was the ‘Follow The Strings’ – The Walking Festival tour of our town’s wonderful pubs. We visited The Fleece, The Horse and Farrier and The White Swan – thank you to all the staff who put up with 70 + strummers and walkers who descended upon them!

We raised £70 for the Walking Festival so WELL DONE EVERYONE! THANK YOU!

(THANK YOU TO ANDY HOYLE – OTLEY CAMERA CLUB)

(THANK YOU TO ANDY HOYLE – OTLEY CAMERA CLUB)

(THANK YOU TO ANDY HOYLE – OTLEY CAMERA CLUB)

So, back to business!!

We had a great session last night looking at the songs we will be playing for our friends at Tealbeck next week (30th)

If you haven’t put your name down to be on the float – please come and cheer us on from the sidelines. Big huge thanks to everyone who has helped with making the decorations for the float so far. You really are wonderful people! And so talented!! I couldn’t have done any of this without you.

Everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun of this event – even if you only know 3 chords! It was such a laugh last year so the more the merrier. Don’t forget to tell everyone about it!

COMING UP

Haworth Ukulele Group Extravaganza – Saturday 28th June

OUO will be appearing in the afternoon and again in the evening for the open mic session. I will be getting names for this on Monday! Should be a lovely day out for us all. Transport can be arranged.

Tealbeck – Monday 30th June

We’ll be playing for the residents at Tealbeck instead of our first session. Everyone is welcome to come and join in. It’s a lovely ‘first gig’ experience too if you’re a little apprehensive about performing…

More details about July will be appearing shortly… there is a lot to keep us busy that’s for sure!

It was great to be back together again for a regular session at The Woolpack last night. It seems like ages with all the Bank Holidays and the Hope and Social event over the last month or so.

We’ve had some fantastic ukulele times though!

MANITOBA HAL
The gig at Korks on 1st June was absolutely brilliant. The blues workshop was really fun as we all did a 12-bar blues shuffle in C together. Then we had a reet good sing song together with Roundhay Ukulele Group along with our friends and families. Manitoba Hal commented on our enthusiasm, skill and the fact that we did ambitious songs! Of course I slipped him a free CD and said we’d be happy to travel trans-atlantic one day to visit! His performance was captivating… I could’ve easily listened to Manitoba Hal all evening. His voice was gutsy yet sweet and his playing style so light and melodious. It was so lovely to hear a different style of playing. We hope to welcome him back next time he is in the UK.

HOPE AND SOCIAL – TOUR OF INFINITE POSSIBILITY (and a load of RAIN!)
Welcoming Rich from Hope and Social along to Korks to learn the songs was such a laugh. I really hope we can do some more gigs with them in the future. He too was impressed by our sing song at the beginning of the session and loved our songs. We loved his too! Good fun to strum too.

The gig itself on Saturday morning was not ruined by the heavy rain – in fact it stopped as we piled onto the stage with the band. It was such a great experience to play with so many people from our community. I loved the ambition and the idea behind the event that we had to get involved. It was great to see OUO and RUG getting to the front of the stage!!

On Saturday we drove over to Rowntree Park in York to help entertain the Environment Agency at their Summer Fair. It was a glorious afternoon and we played lots of songs for them as they soaked up the rays. It was really good fun. Thank you to everyone who came to play. It was just a shame i didn’t get a go on the bouncy castle! Here are some photographic highlights…

On Sunday, a few of us played for the Singing for the Brain Cafe at The Courthouse. We sure made a lot of noise for only 9 ukuleles (BIG thanks to YOU!) and got everyone singing along with us.

There are lots of events to get involved with over the next couple of months… make sure to keep up to date by looking at the GIGS and CALENDARS tab at the top of each blog page. Here are the next important dates though

we had such a fantastic time in York on Saturday….watch this space for video treats! thank you to everyone who came to play (there were 27 of us!) and those who came to support us. it really was a great day and we are very grateful to steve and the red cow music team for hosting such an awesome event. i hope there will be another one next year…because we’ll be back fo sho!

anyhoo… there is no rest for the wicked! we have another gig on sunday – so last night’s session was spent looking at some songs we haven’t played in a while.

the gig is in association with Otley Walking Festival and the event is called “Follow The Strings”

we will be playing songs in 3 of Otley’s pubs…ending up at The Fleece with a bit of a session.
Download all the info you need right here….

so as you can see it was a hectic (but fun as always!) evening! i can’t wait for sunday…it’s going to be great. so bring your friends and bring your best singing voice….see you at the Woolpack, 7.30pm on Sunday 23rd